Personally, I don't want to see any grey space at the Itani/Serco border (except at such time when capturable stations are implemented, and each nation holds 1/2 the stations in a system). In my view grey space would add a buffer zone, that would remove a lot of the immediacy of the border patrol. I want the border patrol to feel like the Serco are threatening the Itani nation, and the Itani are striving to defend it. Having a grey space buffer between the nations would take a lot of that away.

> I would recommend taking the bots out of the border patrol mission, and making
> it pure PvP. Bots can never match up to the difficulty of a human pilot,
> and its human nature to take the path of least resistance.

The problem with that is, when I'm on at 3 AM & there's a grand total of 5 players on, 1 of which is IRC & the others UIT traders, what happens? The BP is not available? I agree that bots really don't compare with humans, but at least they're there. I think the "larger reward for player kills, smaller for bots" solution Spellcast mentioned would be better than removing the bots completely.

> By the way, do you need to have admire standing to take the BP? I am UIT.

No, you need to be hated (<-600) with the enemy nation, and above neutral with the nation you want to take the BP mission from. And UIT actually can't take the mission themselves, they need to be in a group with an Itani or Serco player who would take the mission.

I am hated by the enemy nation, I just was wondering why I couldn't start the mission.

I do like Spellcast's idea, but only if something is done about running.

Another thing, could we stop bots from grouping up? I remember looking everywhere for five bots, then my group's other members suddenly lose health and die. I go to investigate and am istantly killed by the barrage of nuets from five cents.

>>I want the border patrol to feel like the Serco are threatening the Itani nation, and the Itani are striving to defend it.

and this is EXACTLY why i feel that vendetta will always have the serco getting the short end of the stick. the backstory is slanted against us making us seem like the bad guys, and it pervades the mentality of those players who play as itani.

While that makes sense from an ingame, roleplaying perspective, it does not make for FUN gameplay for both sides, because it is balanced against one side. Eventually that side will stop participating, or even caring, Then the feature lapses into disuse.

ON the other hand: I do see your point, i'm just trying to make the game fun for both sides, and it is QUITE frustrating to kill an itani, and have him back within 1 minute, when it takes serco pilots 2-3 to get back to the battle. Also the fact that pilots can just run to a station and rearm/repair on the itani side is also quite aggrivating.

HOWEVER: if a serco capital ship (with NPC defense escorts) that offers the border patrol, and sells ammo/ships could be stationed inside deneb when a large number of people are doing the border patrol, (preferrably moving randomly to a new empty sector every 15 minutes or so to make killing it harder; maybe as a guide run event) that would eliminate part of the problem IMO. then the border patrol mission could last a set period of time, but be ended by the itani if they kill the capital ship.

The whole "we're defending our nation, we should have some advantage" argument is ok, but logically flawed if both sides are being played by PC's. PvP events need to be balanced to at least some degree, and while that 1 WH doesnt seem like much right now, long term i think it WILL discourage serco from participating. Just from doing the mission the past few days i have seen a fair number of serco complaining about it in the group chat and on nation chat.

Technicalities of BP missions :

(a) List out kill score for each player (A gets 3 kills, B 8 klls etc...) so we can see who are freeloading.

(b) /group expel command please to kick out freeloaders (I am on a roll against them ;))

(c) More value to player kills than bot kills

Philosophy (@ Spellcast)

(a) There is nothing wrong with Serco being aggressor : there is nobody getting "shafted" for being bad guys or whatever. After all, everyone is *free* to choose a side. You are not forced to pick Serco in the game. Personally, I have a few Characters in the game, and they are a mix of Itani and Serco. If you feel that the Itani are being cast as good guys, and you want to play a good guy, then by all means you can choose an Itani char. BP missions make leveling a breeze ;). (Make hay!)

(b) I agree with Spellcast : I do like the idea of the Serco capship in Deneb. In fact, I wish the BP missions will expand into "Defending the Capship" or "Attacking the Capship" type missions.

(c) (Stealing from Spell). I like to see a weekly competition in BP missions with a "prize". If, say, the Serco have more kills weekly than the Itani side, then they will get a Capship R+R center in Deneb-GR Wormhole. If the Itani wins, then the Serco will have to travel longer to get home. The Itani can also directly attack the Capship of course, which makes for a dynamic situation.

Finally :

I don't mind Itani spawning quicker than Serco : more PVP for the Serco side :). But I do mind that the stations are closer so Itani can run and repair faster. Hopefully if there is a Serco capship in B12, things will even out a bit more.

yeah, making 2 jumps to repair and reload is annoying, i do like the capital ship idea though

Taken from the Advanced Combat thread... I think the same thing should go for the Border Patrol mission:

The reward bonus should not scale 100% with each player added. That way each person added to the group is more or less pulling their own weight by doing absolutely nothing at all.

The reward bonus should be more like 10% greater for each player in the group. That way for a group of 8, everyone is getting xp at an 80% rate greater than normal.

Actually, if you think about it you have to subtract one member for the group leader, so its actually a 70% bonus for a group of 8.

This works out to 1275/1275/1275 every 3 bots per player for a group of 8, which is still a lot more than the advanced combat mission.

Two things that I think need to be done are to have a different xp scaling factor for the group (closer to 10 or 15% for each member added) and to have different rewards for killing bots as opposed to players.

@CCB
In reply to a):

I'm afraid you misunderstand.
I have no real problem with being the bad guy sometimes. The problem is one of good game design: namely the premise that content for a major portion of the game is based on the assumption that group Z (in this case serco) is the bad guy, and has to take a disadvantage because of this when compared to someone of similar levels in group A (the good guys)

Almost everyone wants to be a good guy except a few malcontents unless there is some form of balanced extra reward FOR being a member of group Z, which at present there is not. As a result if there are major features stacked AGAINST the one group, and nothing stacked FOR that group, eventually no-one will PLAY as group Z, because as you indicated they will switch to the other side.
Once no-one is playing as group Z, the content of the game suffers significantly because parts of it are based off of the assumption that both sides are taking part.

In the case of the border patrol missions, what advantage do serco players get for participating long term. Sure right now the XP is intense and its fun because its new, but longer term if there is a significant advantage to the itani side, (and IMO there is because of the time it takes to repair/rearm/return to combat) the excitement will wear off and it will be harder to get people interested in it from BOTH sides.

EDIT: (and even further off topic,btw i wont be posting anymore about this portion of my suggestion in this topic as I appear have veered over into general game design theory as opposed to mission specific details) I chose RED, the nations didnt have names when i started playing.

@Spellcast :

Fair enough. I see your point now. Personally, I don't see the Serco being cast as the bad guy (aggressor != bad guy), but then I am one of the few who thinks the Ridley Scott's Aliens are just trying to make a living, and Star Trek's Borg as fundamentally being misunderstood :).

Suggestions I like

Serco cap ship near conflict. (preferably equiped with a full service station, but anything would help)

Equally avaible stations near conflict./No stations near conflict.

sidenote on runners: I think BP was at it's best during an ion storm. Made for a very limited exit options. could we have a permenant ion storm. Won't fix everything, but it sure helps the sercos, and even adds a stratigic element to the conflict (control the exit). (i've noticed that some players and npcs don't seam to have the same exit point as me, why?)

Re: Spellcast
>>I want the border patrol to feel like the Serco are threatening the Itani nation, and the Itani are striving to defend it.

and this is EXACTLY why i feel that vendetta will always have the serco getting the short end of the stick. the backstory is slanted against us making us seem like the bad guys, and it pervades the mentality of those players who play as itani.


OK, many things wrong with your argument here. CCB addressed one of them partially, but you reply "I have no real problem with being the bad guy sometimes. The problem is one of good game design: namely the premise that content for a major portion of the game is based on the assumption that group Z (in this case serco) is the bad guy, and has to take a disadvantage because of this when compared to someone of similar levels in group A (the good guys)", and CCB agrees with you. Now, actually in the case of Vendetta I would also agree with you, and I will get on to correcting how you only looked at part of my previous post, but first I'm going to say that while I don't think VO should be like this, giving the "bad guys" a disadvantage compared to the "good guys" is not necessarily a bad game design. How many people play games on the "easy" settings, compared to how many people play on the "hard" or "insane" settings? If being the "good" guy is "easy" when playing the "bad" guy is "hard", that gives the "bad" guy more bragging rights.

But, your argument only holds when you take a portion of my post out of context. I said that in the BP mission as it is now, Itani should have the advantage, as the BP mission is in one of the Itani home systems. Nowhere did I say that in the game as a whole the Itani should have an advantage. In fact, I suggested that there be an "Itani Border Patrol" and "Serco Border Incursion" missions, which would be basically what we have now, and also "Serco Border Patrol" and "Itani Border Incursion" missions, which would take place in Geira Rutilus & would give Serco the "home system advantage." By themselves, both sets of missions are imbalanced in favor of the home nation, but taken together they balance each other out. I did not suggest imbalancing the game as a whole, and I don't appreciate you saying I did.

The backstory doesn't support a long survival time for any capship in Deneb, so unless the ship is cloaked it will die to the Goliath Cannons before it can begin jumping around Deneb (as Spellcast suggested). However, the problem remains that Itani can reinforce their forces significantly quicker than the Serco can. This can be solved by putting the conflict in B-12, the wormhole sector. It might also help balance if (we follow TRS suggestion so that) the sector always had an ion storm so that both sides have a choke point they must pass to leave the sector.

The first time the Goliath Cannon were used, the battle lasted 7 minutes, 31 seconds. But, on the next page of the backstory (Section XII) "the Itani are hard pressed to push back the invasion, despite the use of the Goliath Cannon." So I wouldn't have a problem with Serco capships in Deneb lasting for long enough to be useful for the BP mission. I like that suggestion much better than giving Serco access to a station in Deneb (unless they capture it, once that's possible).

Moving it to the WH sector is something I've suggested before, I think it would be nice. Making it always in an Ion Storm a1k0n mentioned at one point, and I think it would add some interesting things, but I would like to point out that the way ion storms are now, while there would be choke points, each individual pilot would have their own choke point that none of the other pilots could be sure where it was, which makes it something of a less effective choke point than the WH. One solution for this would be to change Ion Storms so that there was one exit per storm, rather than one exit per ship (something else that has been suggested before).

Create a "basic" Border Patrol mission - the current border patrol mission to Sector Deneb C-10. Maybe reduce the XP awards a bit more.

Change backstory to reflect actuality in-game.

Create an "Advanced" Border Patrol Mission to destroy the SMV Nemesis for Itani. For Serco, It could be defending it for a set amount of time. Make SMV Nemesis go to Deneb B-12 and remain there until destroyed. Spawn it in Geira. Make killing the SMV Nemesis worth a TON of XP, plus credits. It'll be really hard without another capship to help destroy it.

That way, Serco using energy weaps can repair in the Serco capship. Rearming with missiles will require a trip back to Geira.

I've just been playing the BP mission. While the recent changes have the correct idea, they went too far. I agree, the rewards were to hi to begin with, but now they are too low. In my opinion, you've killed the mission.

Before we have cap ships invading Deneb, we have to have the goliath cannons implemented, unless we are going to blatantly ignore the backstory.

Then I see this logical progression of missions:

Serco
-----
Mission 1) Serco fighters disable the three goliath cannons in Deneb B12. If this mission is successful enough times, the goliath cannons remain permanently disabled and mission 2 becomes available.

Mission 2) SMV Nemesis invades an empty sector (near Sedina B12) and provides a "mobile base" for BP missions. New objectives are to defend the SMV Nemesis and PK as many Itani pilots as possible. After enough successful BP missions are run, mission 3 becomes available.

Mission 3) SMV Nemesis and two supporting Light Frigates jump to nearest Itani station and "set up camp" 5k away from base. 5-10 Waves of strike force bots are launched at the cap ships. Objectives are to keep the SMV Nemesis alive and destroy all 10 strike force waves. After the strike force is gone the SMV Nemesis launches 6 busses carrying "space marines" which attempt to dock with the station. If 4 out of 6 of these busses make it to the station, the raid is successsful, and the SMV Nemesis returns to Deneb B12.

If enough successful raids are carried out against a station, the station switches alignment to Serco.

Itani
-----

If the goliath cannons are active

Mission 1) Defend the goliath cannons in B12, while PKing as many Serco fighters as possible. If no players are taking Serco mission 1, bots are sent instead. The mission is successful after a certain number of PKs.

If the goliath cannons have been permanently disabled

Mission 2) Repel the Serco incursion into Itani space by destroying the SMV Nemesis. If this mission is successful enough times, the border war goes back to stage 1 and the goliath cannons become active again.

If the Serco complete enough BP missions before the Itani destroy the SMV enough times

Mission 3) Station defense. An Itani station is under attack! The objective is to destroy the SMV Nemesis (and escorts) before the strike force is depleted (hard), or to destroy at least 3 of the assault busses if they are launched (easy). If this mission is successful enough times (i.e. the Serco fail the raid) then the Border War goes back to stage 2, with the SMV Nemesis invading an empty sector.

Station defense would be a lot of fun if there were destructable turrets on the station that could be manned by players.

So to summarize: there would be three phases to the border war:

1) Serco try to destroy goliath cannons while Itani pk Serco.

2) Itani try to destroy SMV Nemesis while Serco pk Itani.

3) Station Assault.

Each of these phases would have to be run multiple times before moving on to the next phase. Just because the Serco destroy the goliath cannons once, the SMV couldn't invade right away. The cannons would just respawn. Only after, say 100 successful "destroy the cannons" missions would the war move on to phase 2. Then the cannons would remain inactive until the Itani successfully destroy the SMV Nemesis in whatever sector it decides to invade 50 times or so. If the Serco successfully run 1,000 BP missions before the Itani kill the SMV Nemesis 50 times, then the war moves on to phase 3, with the Nemesis and two Light Frigates going after the stations.

See what I mean? These missions wouldn't be a "one time only" thing, it would be an ongoing process.

Just the SMV Nemesis?... Aren't you giving it too much credit? The Goliath cannons destroyed an entire fleet in 7 minutes. What're a bunch of fighters and a single capital ship going to do to them?...

I like it with the exception of two things: respawning, and station turrets.

First, Respawning:
Goliath cannons and the *SMV Nemisis both take 2 hours to respawn. You don't need to kill the Goliath cannons repeated times, but they should have quite a bit of armor and enough player escort to keep them anything but defenseless.

Second, Station turrests:
I don't feel as strongly about this one, but players should be a sufficient deffense on their own against the Nemisis invasion. They don't need über turrets to aid in the destruction of busses. And while I'm on the topic of busses, I beg permition to rant a bit more. I think the busses should be roughly the size of a behemoth, the same manueverability and speed, and near (60k?) armor. Defenseless though, if anyone wanted to protect it, they'd have to do it in their own ships.

How do the Itani take their station back, and what are the advantages to holding the station? Debate.

IMHO, if we impliment Phaserlight's idea, (I don't know about anyone else, but I really like it) and answer the two questions above, then we have a perfect guideline for the devs to use.

CP: I guess I didn't make it that clear, but I meant that the SMV Nemesis wouldn't even be involved until phase 2, after the fighters disabled the goliath cannons.

What can fighters do against the goliath cannons? "Pardon me for asking sir, but what good are snub fighters going to be against that?"

The goliath cannons would probably be very slow tracking, maybe they would even have a weak point. This would be an awesome space battle, fighters zooming around and through the goliath cannons, Itani chasing them...

Person: The reason I suggested that each phase of the mission be completed multiple times is that you want to avoid what I call the "Planetside Syndrome." Namely: you wake up one morning and realize that Serco took over half the universe while you were asleep.

Capturing a station should be a long process that takes a lot of work.

Itani would definitely be able to take back their own stations, using the same process. First, they would have to win at the BP missions, putting Serco on defense, then they would move on to a series of station assault missions. Ideally these missions would be equilateral, the same missions being available to both Itani and Serco. See this thread for my original thoughts on the process: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/6352

However, I'm not sure if this is the direction the devs are moving in. They seem to be designing BP so that the Serco are the agressors and the Itani the defenders.

Please do not continue an off-topic discussion from a locked thread here.

This is a Suggestion forum.

You could make a new thread in General or Off Topic titled "Where are all the BP'ers NOW?" or something.

Suggested Changes :

(a) Make all pilots who have taken the mission AND warped to C10 fair game. I.e. even if they run from the sector, they are still counted as "BP kills" if they are chased down and destroyed. OR make ALL pilots in Deneb BP targets

The Itani side has the "home ground" advantage, so to even it up...

(b) Increase Serco Side Rewards (and/or) put SMV Nemesis in B12 (Which are escorted BUT can be attacked for BP kills too.)

So Deneb now is a warzone so....

(c) Remove ALL trader bots from Deneb.